The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith ... Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BOTANY BAY. (E. Review, 1823.) 1. Letter to Earl Bathurst, by the Honourable H. Grey Bennet, M. P. 2. Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the State of the Colony of New South Wales. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 19th June, 1822. Mr. Bigge's Report is somewhat long, and a little clumsy; but it is altogether the production of an honest, sensible, and respectable man, who has done his duty to the public, and justified the expense of his mission to the fifth or pickpocket quarter of the globe. What manner of man is Governor Macquarrie ? ? Is all that Mr. Bennet says of him in the House of Commons true ? These are the questions which Lord Bathurst sent Mr. Bigge, and very properly sent him 28,000 miles to answer. The answer is, that Governor Macquarrie is not a dishonest man, nor a jobber; but arbitrary, in many things scandalously negligent, very often wrong-headed, and upon the whole, very deficient in that good sense, and vigorous understanding, which his new and arduous situation so manifestly requires. Ornamental architecture in Botany Bay! How it could enter into the head of any human being to adorn public buildings at the Bay, or to aim at any other architectural purpose but the exclusion of wind and rain, we are utterly at a loss to conceive. Such an expense is not only lamentable for the waste of property it makes in the particular instance, but because it destroys that guarantee of sound sense which the Government at home must require in those who preside over distant colonies. A man who thinks of pillars and pilasters, when half the colony are wet through for want of any covering at all, cannot be a wise or prudent person. He seems to be ignorant, that the prevention of rheumatism in all young colonies is a much more important object th...Read More